Since early 2009, my Visible Banking team have been tracking how financial institutions are using social media services like facebook (now over 1,100 pages and apps in 75 countries) and twitter (over 1,600 accounts in 72 countries). It gives us some unique insights we share with our clients to help them immediately increase the level of engagement on those popular online communities.

Google + was launched on 28 June 2011, and in the last four months, everything has been said of Google's latest venture in the world of social media. This is the fastest growing 'social network' ever with 40 million 'users' (vs 'active users') at the end of October 2011.

So how big is the opportunity for brands and how critical it is to build an active presence on this other social media 'channel'? More importantly, should financial institutions hurriedly jump on the bandwagon and create another social media profile without much conviction or engagement?

Your main goal is to build an engaged 'community' of facebook or twitter composed of as many users interested in your brand, your values or your initiatives as possible. Quickly increasing your 'fan base' usually impacts the quality of your community and the overall level of brand intimacy, and make it difficult for you to design efficient content and reward strategies including the occasional wall posts about financial services.

As a page owner, in addition to comparing the size of your audience with your competitors', you want to assess the levels of engagement and visibility of your page (metrics such as: volume of likes, comments, shares, posts, questions and answers...). In early October, facebook unveiled its new Pages Insights analytics Tool and introduced a new metric to access the individual level of success of its 200 million pages: 'talking about this'.

So, let's find out which pages in the worldwide financial services industry are the most talked about.

Now, I will share my thoughts and recommendations on one of the key challenges on facebook for financial institutions: driving engagement via an open wall. Surprisingly, we found that the majority of facebook pages in financial services are 'open' and 'at risk'... find out why, and what to do to lower the level of risk.

I believe the financial services industry worldwide was lacking of a comprehensive benchmark on social media activity on more and more popular online communities like facebook or twitter.

This is precisely why, back in early 2009, me and my team at Visible Banking started tracking the social media presence of banks, insurance, investment firms and more widely any type of financial services firms all over the world.

I'm delighted to announce that, as of 1st October 2011, my team was tracking a cumulative 31,548,884 likes from over 1,000 facebook pages and apps in now 75 countries (source: the Visible Banking Facebook Watch series).

I was pleasanty surprised when just a couple of hours later, I received an email from Moisés Gordillo - Digital Marketing at Interbank, to thank me for my coverage and offer me an interview with one of the leading media in Peru: "This post has generated much expectation among the local media. One of the most important in Peru wants to make you a skype interview about social media in banks in the world where you mention the participation of a Peruvian bank."

And just a couple of days ago, an update (with a very decent 150+ interactions) on the Interbank page caught my eyes.

My Take Bloggers could well be your best shot at spreading the news and creating some buzz outside your country. An insightful, unbiased, blog post usually generates a good amount of tweets, linkedin updates and possibly other blogging and traditional media coverage. This is a cost effective way (it is totally free) to generate great exposure and contribute to your earned media goals.

But based on my experience, very few financial institutions appreciate how much time and effort it takes to publish insightful blog posts.

And they still don't understand what motivates bloggers and how to reward them. Hence the importance to understand what your influencers expect in return: some exposure on your own social media assets (a wall post on facebook or a tweet), a comment on the blog post from your community manager, an interview with your project owner, a thank you email with a request for a conference call to explore opportunities for a collaboration...

I'd like to thank Moises and his Interbank colleagues for the visibility on facebook, and praise them for their well executed influencer management strategy.

Working TogetherWe at Visible Banking would be delighted to help you and your team better UNDERSTAND and LEVERAGE social media in a strategic yet pragmatic way. So please don't hesitate to call me, send me an email or DM me (@Visible_Banking) to book a meeting and talk about twitter, facebook, crowdsourcing, customer reviews, social media & social commerce in banking, financial services and insurance.

According to the excellent facebakers.com site, this number equals just about the number of likes of...Beyonce (!) which would put the whole industry as #25 most followed page on facebook in the world. Justin Bieber (also pictured) makes the Top 10 with about 35 million likes. Outstanding.

The first 'brand' is Coca Cola, #14 on the list with over 33 million likes. The first page in our benchmark, Progressive's 'Flo the Progressive girl' (with 3.1 million likes) would be listed at #700.

VB Facebook Watch: Tracking over 1k Pages and Apps WorldwideI believe the financial services industry worldwide was lacking a comprehensive benchmark of social media activities on more and more popular online communities like facebook or twitter. This is precisely why back in early 2009 me and my team at Visible Banking started tracking the social media presence of banks, insurance, investment firms and more widely financial services firms all over the world.

Top 10s: Countries, Regions, Insurance and Credit Unions I invite you to check out our Top 10s for the insurance industry, the credit union industry as well as the following countries and regions: France, UK, Spain, Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America (LATAM).

I believe the financial services industry worldwide was lacking of a comprehensive benchmark on social media activity on more and more popular online communities like facebook or twitter. This is precisely why back in early 2009 me and my team at Visible Banking started tracking the social media presence of banks, insurance, investment firms and more widely financial services firms all over the world.

New Visible Banking Quarterly Reports: Facebook and TwitterI'm keen to connect with you If you are looking to better understand those new communication channels, benchmark yourself against your peers, and successfully leverage social media and contribute to your business objectives.

FYI, during the summer we will be launching two quarterly reports focused on facebook and twitter. We are keen to find out how useful those reports would be to you and what you'd like to see included. Send us your comments and suggestions!

Working TogetherWe at Visible Banking would be delighted to help you and your team better UNDERSTAND and LEVERAGE social media in a strategic yet pragmatic way. So please don't hesitate to call me, send me an email or DM me (@Visible_Banking) to book a meeting and talk about twitter, facebook, crowdsourcing, customer reviews, social media & social commerce in banking, financial services and insurance.

In May 2009, I started tracking the financial institutions (FIs) on facebook (only 128 accounts back then!). It will always be a work in progress, so please don't hesitate to get back to me to flag any missing initiatives.

My Visible Banking Social Media Watch Series (twitter, facebook, blog, youtube) gives me access to some great, and unique, insights. On regular basis, I share some of those key stats and insights with you on my blog, twitter, and facebook, and I provide some second-to-none recommendations to my clients.

I invite you to check the insights included in the slide below (data collected on 31/12/2010) and compare those figures with the ones from last month.

For the first time, I decided to come up with three Top 10s instead of a single Top 10 for all categories: one for banks, one for credit cards, one for insurance. So, how much do you like this new approach?

Due to the new format with three Top 10s, we have a brand new banking Top 10 this month. We are delighted to see so much diversity: no less than 7 countries are represented in this new Top 10. Awesome.

Our data collection team identified another facebook account from Interbank in Peru: mitiempo.pe which made it directly to #3 with his 300k+ fans.

Pages dedicated to sport experienced a very strong month with over 60% growth for RBS 6 NATION and 25% for Barclays Football. Popular is the only 'corporate' page to enjoy a similar growth with an increase of fans close to 30%.

Once more BNP PARIBAS NET is the only page of the top 10 which didn't enjoy any growth last month, demonstrating the challenge ahead for the French bank which hasn't started yet to manage its community. Credit Cards - Top 10 most liked pages:1. Small Business Saturday (American Express), 2. Members Project (American Express), 3. American Express (American Express), 4. ZYNC (American Express), 5. Visa Go World (Visa), 6. OPEN (American Express), 7. Visa Signature (Visa), 8. Barclaycard (Barclays), 9. Discover (Discover), 10. SCB CREDIT CARD (SCB).

What can I say? American Express is the clear king of facebook, not only in the credit card category but overall. The financial services firm counts 5 pages over 80k, 2 pages over 500k and 1 page well over 1 million fans!

And not only those pages are massively followed, their growth rates are still commandable: over 210% for OPEN, close to 200% for their corporate page, and still over 30% for Small Business Saturday ('SBS', launched in early November 2010). I invite you to check my comprehensive coverage of SBS.

In May 2009, I started tracking the financial institutions (FIs) on facebook (only 128 accounts back then!). It will always be a work in progress, so please don't hesitate to get back to me to flag any missing initiatives.

My Visible Banking Social Media Watch Series (twitter, facebook, blog, youtube) gives me access to some great, and unique, insights. On regular basis, I share some of those key stats and insights with you on my blog, twitter, and facebook, and I provide some second-to-none recommendations to my clients.

This month we have a new Top 3. Just a few weeks after launch, American Express' Small Business Saturday made it straight to number 2 with over 1 million fans, kicking Visa Go World out of the chart. American Express now has three pages in the top 10 with an aggregated 1.7 million fans.

Expect the Top 10 to change next month: three pages have between 105k-106k followers including American Express, KBank Live and Interbank Peru which all made the Top 10 fastest growing pages this month.

BNP PARIBAS NET is the only page of the top 10 which didn't enjoy any growth last month, demonstrating the challenge ahead for the French bank which hasn't started yet to manage its community.

This month, the Top 10 added a staggering 1,371,080 new fans or 228% more than last month's Top 10 at 418,009 new fans. This is essentially due to the incredibly successful Small Business Saturday campaign by American Express.

A special mention to American Express' Members Project, Barclays Football, Allstate's Mayhem which added respectively 113k, 46k and 32k new fans last month.

This month's Top 10 most active applications reached just over 144k monthly users versus 245k last month. Most of those applications support a marketing campaign or a short-term contest.

Once again, American Express made the Top 10 at number 2 with its Tu 24/7 personal application in Mexico. As expected Chase Community Giving should soon be leaving the charts, loosing another 25k monthly users last month.

Please note that TIAA-CREF's Raise the Rate enjoyed a decent rise of usage due to the fast approaching deadline of the contest (December 9th).

ASB Bank's Virtual Branch is still in the Top 10, despite losing over 8k monthly users. This is due to the end of the Sony VAIO contest, the end of 'the novelty factor', and less promotion on the bank's homepage.

The Top 10 is almost exclusively made of US Insurance firms, except for Allianz from Germany and Aviva from Ireland. GEICO and Allstate are the only insurance firms with two pages in the Top 10. Progressive Insurance is catching up with over 19k fans.

Industry Feedback

“Christophe's book is really the must-have synopsis of the current state-of-play in social media in banking. Christophe has taken a deep passion for the topic, and turned it into an account of the landscape valuable to anyone who has social media responsibilities in financial services” James Gardner, General Manager at Spigit

“Christophe is extremely well informed about the banking and financial services industries. He's at all the right conferences, and digs deep with his interviews of all the influencers and innovators. He's also a tremendously nice guy :-)” Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO at Mint Software

“Christophe seems to have his finger on the pulse of the financial services industry. Visible Banking has become "the" source of information for innovations in the financial services industry.”Tim Collins, SVP-Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo